The challenge of supplying drinking water across Khartoum state remains largely unresolved despite extensive discussion and sustained efforts to restore this essential service, alongside repeated calls for residents to return to the capital. Water production and distribution facilities in Khartoum were heavily damaged during fighting from April 2023 through May 2025, when direct combat subsided across wide parts of the state.
The Khartoum State Water Authority now works from offices on Al-Arbaeen Street in Omdurman. An Atar reporter submitted written questions to the authority’s media officer but received no reply; the reporter was told this was because the director is unwell. According to the authority’s Facebook page, network workers and engineers continue maintenance on the transmission lines that began after the city returned to army control, including inspections to clear blockages from the system.
All 13 of Khartoum’s water production stations were affected by the war and went out of service at different times.
Engineer Hisham Al Amir, Director General, Drinking Water and Sanitation Authority
Engineer Hisham Al-Amir, director general of the Drinking Water and Sanitation Authority at the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources, has said all 13 of Khartoum’s water production stations were affected by the war to varying degrees and went out of service at different times. Bahri station, which produces about 320,000 cubic meters a day and supplies large sections of Bahri and Khartoum, including the Al-Sahafa neighborhoods south of Khartoum, stopped on the second day of fighting and suffered severe damage. Al-Mogran station, which feeds central and eastern Khartoum and parts of Omdurman, halted in the fourth month of the conflict and for several months served as a military front line between the army and the Rapid Support Forces. In addition to production plants, Khartoum state has seven booster pumping stations.
Most repair efforts have focused on Al-Mogran station. On July 17, the Khartoum Water Authority announced the station had been restarted, saying engineering teams had successfully brought it online and were pumping water to targeted neighborhoods in Khartoum and Omdurman. Residents, however, say the flows have been insufficient. On Jan. 17, Prime Minister Kamil Idris, accompanied by the state governor, visited Al-Mogran station to confirm it was operating to cover citizens’ needs in the targeted districts, but residents who spoke with Atar say the pumping remains inadequate.
Khartoum Water Authority officials say repeated visits and the insistence on restarting the Al-Mogran water station stem from its role in supplying the ministries’ corridor, key state institutions and several universities in central Khartoum.
Despite efforts by the Drinking Water and Sanitation Authority, many residents who returned from displacement to west, central and east Khartoum have been forced to find alternative housing because water is unavailable in their neighborhoods. An Atar reporter spoke with a resident from central Khartoum who had been displaced to Al-Jazirah; when he returned to Khartoum, he moved to Wad al-Bakhit in Karrari because his neighborhood lacks drinking water. A man who asked to remain anonymous, who before the war lived between Al-Mak Nimir Street and Palace Street in Khartoum, told the Atar correspondent: “There is no water in the region at all, which has prompted dozens of families to opt against returning; those who did have sought housing in alternative areas.”
The real obstacle is not the stations themselves, but the destruction of transmission lines and the theft of transformers and delivery hoses.
Water authority official, anonymous
Tuti water station is operating better than most because, residents say, it avoided the sabotage that damaged other plants. Al-Jerif West station, which produces about 15,000 cubic meters daily, runs for limited hours but, according to a local resident, supplies water to all homes in its area. The resident told Atar that Tuti runs on gasoline because electricity reaches only small parts of Al-Jerif West.
Agriculture and Irrigation Minister Ismat Qarshi Abdullah visited Jabal Awliya station on Jan. 24, accompanied by the authority’s director general, Engineer Mohamed Ahmed Awad, to inspect its operation. A water authority official who asked not to be named said Al-Shajara and Jabal Awliya stations are less damaged than Al-Mogran. What blocks water delivery to south Khartoum, the official said, is the destruction of transmission lines and the theft of transformers and delivery hoses.
“Most transmission lines were damaged by shelling and many were stolen,” Saif al-Din Ali, a resident of Al-Kalakla, told Atar. He said weak electricity has severely reduced water production and distribution and added that even if power is restored, the lines are not fit to carry water to southern neighborhoods, from Al-Shajara through Al-Kalakla and Mayo. Therefore, the pipelines must be repaired before pumping, or the operation will waste water, labor and scarce electricity.
Electricity is nearly the final blow to efforts to rehabilitate the city most damaged by fighting, since large swaths have lain outside state control and the rule of law since April 15, 2023. The power sector suffered catastrophic losses: cables and distribution lines were ripped from streets, buildings and government facilities across the city.
In coordinated, painstaking operations, thieves dismantled cables and transformers from every quarter of the city. Yusuf Omar, a lawyer who works in central Khartoum, told Atar that the service lines and transformers in the five-story building that houses his office were removed entirely, and even underground wiring was dug up and looted. After visiting his office in Souq al-Arabi to inspect the damage following the end of fighting, he said: “I counted six buildings in central Khartoum that had every electrical connection and transformer taken. Power will not return to those blocks until connections are rebuilt; lines, transformers and poles damaged by shelling must be replaced.”
Another resident from eastern Khartoum described the blackout as “an obstacle to preparing Khartoum for the return of its people.” The man, who requested anonymity, told Atar that calls for residents to return must be matched by the rehabilitation of services, with electricity at the top of the list. “Without it, water and other services won’t function, and no one can live in a house without power for three years,” he said.
In the Al-Kalakla and Jabra areas, power swings between total outages and a weak trickle, residents say. “Electricity is often off for hours each week, and when it returns it’s too feeble to run fans or water pumps,” said Suleiman Mubarak. “You can’t say electricity is available across all southern neighborhoods, even to Jabal Awliya.”
Residents of Al-Jerif West complain of almost no electricity; some say power reaches only small pockets within the neighborhood, though the district stretches widely from Manshiya Bridge nearly to Soba Bridge, Burri and the Nasser Extension. An electricity department source said restoring power across all neighborhoods is difficult because, beyond transformers, the underground connections and cables were completely looted. Current efforts remain focused on supplying transformers first.
Farouk Cemetery Transformer station in Al-Amarat is being rehabilitated by electricity authorities. The station supplies neighborhoods south of the railway and the Al-Amarat, Al-Sahafat and Al-Duyum districts, while maintenance work is also under way at the Khartoum East transformer station that feeds central Khartoum, including parts of Souq al-Arabi.
While Khartoum needs around 14,000 transformers, only about 400 have arrived.
Return Preparation Committee and Khartoum State website
But official efforts remain meager compared with the scale of damage to the power sector, which nearly lost its infrastructure across both Khartoum and Jabal Awliya. A local government source in Khartoum state described the theft and sabotage as deliberate and organized, saying cables and lines were dismantled from all neighborhoods and facilities. “What is most surprising is that wiring and cables along Hawa Street were dug up and stolen from beneath the ground,” the source told Atar.
Activists from East Khartoum emergency committees reported that power returned to the Al-Sahafa neighborhoods, and television channels captured residents’ joy in Square 29 a few days ago, while the Al-Riyadh and Al-Taif districts remain dark. All these areas suffer extensive transformer damage and wholesale looting of electrical cables; service has returned only partially to stretches of Street 60. Work in central Khartoum’s “Souq al-Arabi” continues to revive commercial and banking activity.
Responding to complaints that some neighborhoods were skipped when transformers were distributed, an electricity technical official said transformer installation must follow verification of the underground network’s integrity to avoid short-circuiting and damaging new units.
An Atar reporter reviewed a report from the Return Preparation Committee, Khartoum state, chaired by Ibrahim Gaber, which concluded the state needs about 14,000 transformers and estimated losses in the power sector at roughly $468 million. The Khartoum state website said about 400 transformers of various capacities have arrived. An Atar reporter could not obtain a response from media officials; Dr. Montaser Abdel Qader, the media manager, said he had referred questions to the Sudan Electricity Company but had received no reply by the time of reporting.
Despite continued outages across wide areas of Khartoum state, the Atar correspondent noted that sales offices have reopened and a public-awareness campaign, a “mobile theater,” is warning residents against unsafe informal connections, while fines of up to 300,000 Sudanese pounds are being imposed on violators.
